Grave

Jack Vital


Stay alive, he whispered.


I haven't posted in a while. He took my phone saying I need to rest and worry only about healing. I was too infected to argue. Too weak.


I've been awake for a few hours now but for the past several days I've been in and out of consciousness. Terrible dreams of dark tunnels, Dee, Trevor, my parents, rooms full of blood and shit, and the stink. Oh god the stink. I would wake up to it and will myself back to sleep despite it. Waking up to it was waking up to the blackness that had reined over my life for the past 2 weeks since Trevor died and came back. You should have saved him. You can't do anything right. Pathetic! You actually need someone else to help you live. He'll know you're infected. He'll know...


You're not infected. You would have turned already. You'd be one of the risen. Anyway, you can't spend a spare second thinking of it, he says. 
I'm not even sure of his name.
Grave. My name is Grave.
He leaves some food that he says will help me heal and then walks away.


During these past days when I'd wake up I could feel the blackness inside me. It haunts my sleep with the dreams, my waking life with the stink and with the doubts. I'd wake up to thoughts of how infinitely incapable I am. I'd wake with my senses confused. I'd waiver between feeling as though I was producing the stink, to wondering if I were dead, to being sure I was dead, and then the doubt would incapacitate me.
You loser. You pathetic piece of rotten shit. My stomach would cramp trying to stave off the thoughts. A battle clashing inside me. The blackness versus... something. Me?


I remember thoughts like: you won't get far, you have no idea how to stay alive, you couldn't save Dee or Trevor, you couldn't even open your mouth when that cowboy came in shooting the place. 


The thoughts were somehow unfamiliar but critical in a way that felt familiar. I'd never done anything special. Never been popular or good at my job. I float between inconsequential and completely apathetic. This voice knew that. It would wake me up.
It would tell me to look under my skin and pick at my bullet wound. It wanted the black out, but not to purge it, but display it. I could feel it and I was sick. My stomach would cramp and my mind would fight but I couldn't do it. I'd go pick at my wrists or at the bullet hole. I'd shiver and ask for my mom. I'd shiver and ask to just end it. I'd shiver and bargain with a God I'd never talked to.


But every time I did it seemed that Grave would come in.
You're causing your own suffering. Your body and mind must be healthy. Fight the thoughts and rest.


He'd say that Dee was out of my control. He'd say that in order to survive I must listen to him. He'd say it isn't safe where they are and that we need to head north to the cold. There is light there, he said. 


Grave just came in and asked how I was feeling. He asked me a bunch of questions about how I was feeling physically and mentally. I didn't say much. My stomach hurts from trying to fight off the thoughts and it doesn't leave much fight left for the pain, the tears, or the smell.


So, here I am. Healing. Is anyone out there? What is going on in the world? A lot of sites aren't updated. Grave keeps telling me I shouldn't worry about it right now. It seems like this isn't just happening in Boston. If you have information post it here, please. We need to know the truth.

before

Sometimes I look back on that morning to forget about the scraping sound in the basement here at the farmhouse.  At times I feel safe here despite the sound, but I know I'm not.   My days are numbered.  Back at the beach house I was in a place filled with warm memories: i had always felt safe and happy there before, but i could feel the danger creeping as the days ticked down in that house.  I would pace between the kitchen and tiny living room and all i could think of was getting out.  That morning I woke up early, ready to leave.  I got dressed, crammed a handful of granola in my mouth and was still chewing it when i heard the first thud, just as i slammed my heel into my loosely tied boot.  I looked out the little window of my front door and could just see the emaciated thing smashing its fist into the rear window of a Volvo station wagon parked in the driveway next door.

It's one of the starving, I thought, and I backed away form the window as the next wet whap left a splatter on the now spider webbed safety glass.  Up my spine shot that feeling of unease: it raced through my shoulders and up my neck to the back of my head, and drained down through my legs to weaken my thighs and my knees.  Not just fear, but a breath-catching, eye-watering, stomach churning sense of complete wrongness that was unlike anything I'd ever felt before, alive and squeezing into my thoughts for good.

I heard the third crunch as what i imaged was left of the thing's hand smashed a tiny hole through the glass, but at this point i had grabbed my bag and the pile next to it and retreated back where i had been sleeping, closing the door too loudly, sitting down on the edge of the bed, and squeezing my eyes  shut until they ached.

9.

Jack Vital


You're weak. You're pathetic. All you had to do was get out of the way. You can't even do that right.


A bullet through his brain that must have collected just enough black seepage from Trevor found its way into my arm. The sickness that claimed him has me now. I'm sure of it. What luck, huh?


When Trevor came into the apartment, sick and dying, I thought maybe he would get better. Then I saw his face when he died. Hopeless, frail, and a receptive accepting of his fate. That is what I have. I acceptance this infection. This curse. This blackness.


I keep coughing. That coughing and spitting you do right before you throw up. I'm waiting for that black sewage to come firing out of my insides. But it hasn't come, yet.
It laughs at me.


You're not a fighter. You're a loser. You can't even get infected right. 


I'm tucked, curled in the bathtub. Might as well be the toilet. I haven't eaten in two days and I'm not hungry. Maybe when the curse takes over you there is no hunger for like before. I drink water from the sink. Two days ago my roommate came in, died, woke up, tried to bite me, and was then killed by a man with a gun. That man put a bullet through Trevor that went into me. He's gone now but he left me with a death sentence.


I'm posting on my blog to try and put the truth out there about all of this because the papers can't make up their minds. But right now I just need help. Does anyone know a cure? I don't care if it is anti-biotics or Voodoo. Even something just to help with the smell. It is giving me headaches. I can't get used to it. Please help me.


Just give up.


I keep pinching my veins on the tender underside of my wrist. I want to see the darkness pour out of me. I have scratches from where I've bled but the blood is dark red. I keep thinking that I'm immune. Or maybe the darkness hasn't spread to my wrists yet.


So I start prodding at my bullet wound. Picking at it. Poking at it. Where is it? WHERE is IT!?


While I'm writing this a greenish yellow syrup is draining from the wound. The stitches are undone. It isn't black but its only a matter of time. I feel faint. You piece of shit. If you had one ounce of worth in you the mirror would be broken and you'd stop scratching your wrist and finally slice it.


I keep imaging the different scenarios of me cutting my wrists open. One scenario is Trevor, even though he's died twice now, walking in shortly after. I'd explain to him I didn't mean to. I'd tell him I just wanted to get the blackness out. I'd beg for help as the blood spread across the floor.


The other scenario is that I would watch the living red blood pour out and slowly thicken into black.(My God, the pain coming from my shoulder hurts so much). I'd just slowly watch the blackness come out but I wouldn't die. It would stop filtering out of me and I'd still be alive. And the voice would say...


You can't even kill yourself properly.


Or maybe I just wake up like Trevor. Either way, I'm not brave enough to kill myself. Whatever comes after scares me too much.


I need to get that shit out of me. I poke at the bullet wound. I prod at it. I get the butt end of my tooth brush and dig it in there. When I do it feels numb. Like I'm sponging around inside a stranger looking for something important. It hurt so much I passed out. When I woke up I wanted to be hungry. But hungry for what?


I pass out. I sleep. I wake up. I look for the blackness under my skin. Then I pass out again.


Life just takes you. It wields you and twists you. Then it takes you. The pain is radiating. 


If this moment defined your life Jack, you would forever be known as Jack the Coward. Jack the dickless wonder who poked himself to death. You can't even die well. 


I'm dizzy. My arm near the wound is numb. This bullet hole is bigger and getting bigger. I have this whole in my shoulder, now. A gap that feels and looks sick.


I just keep falling asleep. I'm going to die. I should eat something.


I keep having dreams. Swimming in black water. Trevor chasing me. He is on all floors running like a wile possessed beast. That dead man dressed in black waiting for me at the end of the hallway. Holding my coat for me. Tapping his foot on the ground. Waiting for me to take steps towards him.


Here I come. Here I come.


Then a voice.


Get up, it says. Wake up. It's time to wake up. You need to eat. You need to heal your arm.


And you need to live.

8.

Posted by Jack Vital.


That's it. I'm dead. I'm dying. I'm infected. Cursed. Bound for the unholy undead virus that claimed my roommate before he was re-killed.
The stench that was coming from Trevor and all that black ungodly vomit he spewed all over the apartment is crawling inside me. I can feel the blackness. I'm just waiting. Looking at my veins until I can feel the darkness grip me. I have it. Or I guess... it has me.


First Trevor came home, then he died, then he was awakened, then he came after me, and now he has been delivered from whatever horrible thing took him over. But now my fate is left in the same black wake and that ungodly stink is crawling up my lungs and with each breath further fowling up this tiny bathroom in which I've once again barricaded myself. The only difference now is the bullet holes in the door and my unholy sentencing.
I'm shaking so badly I can barely type the words on this little phone's touch screen.


Help me, please. I'm going to die. Where is help?
No one is coming, Jack. It's over. You're pathetic.
That man, he kicked the door in. I pressed my head against the bathroom door. Then I pressed harder because I heard nothing. He must have turned the corner and saw Trevor. He called out.
You! Speak or you get a fucking a bullet.


Silence. Footsteps.


Then three shots went out. I felt a sting in my arm and the noise was so piercingly loud all my senses went into to shock. The bite in my arm, the noise from the gun, the stink from Trevor, and I reeled backwards falling into the bathtub pulling the shower curtain down with me.
Stupid awkward loser.


The guy must have heard me. He came over the the bathroom door.
Anyone in there? I'm not in the mood to waste rounds but I will plug that bathroom full of hell if you don't answer me.
Pause.
Hello?
My mouth is open but I can't speak. I start to feel liquid sliding down my arm.
The door gets kicked in. I start crying. Out loud.
He looks down at me.
Get up. Get up. C'mon. 
I can't. I fucking can't. I think I'm injured. I'm scared.
He grabbed me and pulled me. He looked at my arm. I looked, too. I couldn't believe it. I'd been shot. Blood was slowly sticking my shirt to my skin.
Sorry kid, we'll fix you up later. We gotta go. No time.


I'm crying uncontrollably. 
Weak.
He laughs.
I can't believe it. I put three bullets you're friend's head, there. How did on of them end up in your arm.
What? What do you mean?
Listen, I'll explain later. We HAVE to go.


No. No. No. No. You think that black shit from the bullet that went through him is in me now? What if...


I couldn't bare the thought.


What if I have what he has. I mean he was bitten. Maybe it spread to him and now it will spread to me.
Kid, you have a bulltet inside you. Nothing else. You want to stay here and die or you want to get the hell out of here?


Oh God. OH GOD! I can feel it. I can feel that black sickness. I'm going to die. Help me. HELP ME!


That's the last thing I remember, was saying that. 


I woke up a few minutes ago. My bullet wound stitched up and a note.


Kill the brain and you kill them. Stay alive, kid.
Signed Mortey


I'm dead. 
Just get it over with. Do it. You want to be one of those?
I'm on the ground now. Curled up with my back to the door. My last ditch effort to survive is just using my body to prevent anything from coming in this tiny bathroom.
Give up. You could have prevented this.


A text comes in on my phone. Dee is dead. My girl friend is dead. I'm dead. Oh God. That black stink is crawling inside me. I can feel it like an army of tapeworms taking me over vein by vein. It will reach by brain.
I'm crying. Calling for help. Quivering. Dee. Dee? Mommy... Mommy?


********


I just woke up again. I must have passed out. I had a dream.


Before that man came and shot Trevor... and me. In the dream I walked out the bathroom door and there was Trevor. It was freezing cold and the stink was worse than ever. He was down a long hallway. He was dressed like the Grim Reaper. Dee was standing next to him and she was one of them. Like Trevor. It looked like she was obeying him.


He didn't have scythe, though. He had my long black winter coat and he was holding it for me. Waiting for me to go over there and stretch my arms into those warm inviting sleeves. 


Instinctively, I turned my back to walk away. When I went to look over my shoulder back at them Trevor had taken his hood off. Then he came after me. Fast as anything I'd ever seen. Coming on at me in a flash with out time for me react. I froze. And just as he came upon me. I woke up.


When I did I remembered watching Trevor die as he said They're coming. 


-Jack Vital

7

I packed a small light backpack full of canned food, my headlamp and my military tent/poncho that i still do not know how to make into a tent.  This was at about five in the evening, and my plan was to set out early in the morning, with the hope of making it to the little farm in one day.  I put the bag by the door and then stood in the middle of the living room for about ten minutes picking up objects, feeling their weight, looking at them sideways and pretending to swing them.  I thought of pulp fiction; i felt foolish.  In the end i settled on a cricket bat i had been given as a birthday present, despite the fact I do not play cricket, back when i was in college.  I had already been sleeping with a mean, sharp cooking knife slid between the mattress and the box-spring of my bed so that the handle was within easy reach.  It had its own little sheath i found in the back of the junk drawer, which i tossed next to the bag by the door.  My Leatherman was still attached to my belt, but i added it to the pile next to the door, creating a physical checklist for myself in the morning.
For dinner i ate the rest of the bread and cheese i'd been saving, washed down with flat Moxie.
I turned my phone on again, checked for service, cursed and turned it off.
I checked every entrance, I swear i did, I did every night; i know because i fall asleep by going through my checklist again and again in my head, locking doors and locking windows and closing shades.  Since everyone left, i guess i'd become a bit nuts.
I didn't get to sleep for hours.

6.

The black shit is seeping through the towel I shoved into the crack at the bottom of the bathroom door. The stench is palpable. I can't seem to get myself to leave this bathroom. It feels like the stink is stuck in my throat. I can't escape it. I try and put my arm to my nose, but it almost smells like my skin is absorbing that black smell.


Trevor won't respond to anything. I keep trying to talk to him, to coax him out of this state he is in. But he just keeps pounding the door.


WHAP.


I'm still stuck in bathroom. Posting here for help and to spread truth. Some of the on-line papers say 'get out of town.' Some say 'stay in you're apartment.' Some are saying there are others like Trevor. Some are saying it is nothing. No one is saying what it is. Every time I try to open the door to get away my gut turns while I slide down the door into the fetal position.


I got a text from my girlfriend's mom that said, "Get here fast Dee is sick bitten hurt bad going to metro hsptl." God. Oh God. I hope Dee is okay. Trevor said he was bitten, too. I should save her. I should go save her.
  
She's dead. I know it. 


Or worse. The hospital may be able to help. I love Dee. We've been together for... for...Oh, shit. I forgot.



I can't concentrate with Trevor banging on the door. It's been almost 12 hours now. My mind and body are shutting down but every time my eyelids close... WHAP and then this liquid squish. I have to assume his arms are cut open from repetition and that flesh is spreading around the door. WHAP, again. Then I wait. Sitting down with my back to the door. Eyes drift close, but I know what's coming. No sleep. WHAP.


When I was a kid I used to read about means of torture. Never performed it, just studied it. I thought about the kind of people that are strong enough to live through the suffering or possibly die without giving in and the people that cave. I thought about the torturer's pursuit of crippling the tortured's mind and body by dragging them through the depths of pain and hell until their face to face with their end. Kneading them into submission. And I thought about the tortured's pursuit to endure, live, or die. Secret safe. Those two forces driving into one another. Battling.


I always wondered how I'd respond and that's what fascinated me. In the face of unconscionable pain and inevitability our resolve is tested. My response, I always thought, would be the person I really am inside. Not someone I feel I have come to know very well.


One method of torture was called Chinese Water Torture. You can read more about it here. The basic idea is that someone is strapped down to a bed such that they are completely immobile. Slowly, and in random intervals water drips onto the subjet's forehead. Some would have you believe that after a long enough time the water creates a cavern in your head causing brain damage. But the truth is that this was a psychological form of suffering, not a physical one. 


See, the torture wasn't the actual drops, but the time in between them. At first you think it will stop, then you hope it will stop, and then you pray it will. Then another drop falls. There would be no escape from the inevitability of that next drop and you had no idea when it was coming. Eventually you come to learn there is no stopping that next drop from falling. In the face of that you loose your mind... or you endure.


WHAP... another rap at the door.


In between those drops there was a truth that you were forced to look straight in to as you lay there tied down. And in the face of that truth you acknoledge it or you crumble. A truth that, in life, we go to great lengths to avoid so much as the line of thinking. And spend most of our lives avoiding and denying the end of that line. Then there would be another drop. It was coming. All you could do is wait. There would be no break long enough to escape the reality of the situation. In between those drops, in between these smashes at the door, is my mortality. And the very second I get the luxury of my mind running away with a thought that's to do with anything but what comes next...


WHAP... another rap at the door. And another is coming. I don't think I can stop...


HOLY SHIT! Someone is knocking at the door. The other door. The front door. He says he has a gun. He wants to know if anyone is in here. 


Oh God.


I'm talking to Trevor now. I'm telling him to snap out of it. I'm telling him this guy says he has a gun. He says if anyone comes after him he'll shoot 'em. I can help you Trevor. I can make this go away. Trevor, this guy is going to kill you. You can't go after him. Trevor? Trevor?


Shit, he kicked in the door.

5

I’m calling it my basement because I’ve been here eight days now, and I haven’t seen any other people. I picked most of the vegetables outside in the main garden over the first few days, and they’re starting to be pickable again. This old farmhouse was a business once, but that was before. There weren’t too many people up here to begin with, so there aren’t too many dead people around. There is enough jarred and canned veggies to last a while, and I’ve boarded up the windows and installed makeshift slides of four by four posts from the lumber pile out back on all the doors, as they had no locks before. I think the generator outside must be hooked to the big fuel tank, so I think if I need power I can get it, I haven't tried it. The nights are hard, but I put extra boards across the bedroom I sleep in and try not to make too much noise. In fact I’m always quiet; I think they can hear better than they can see, but I can’t prove that and I don’t want to try to prove it. People who run experiments die.

4

When the news and everyone in the neighborhood started losing their minds I locked up and waited. I watched from my second floor bathroom window as they packed cars full to bursting with stuff they would never need and then tie more stuff they would never need to the roofs. It took days before the last of them lumbered down the one road that ran along the beach and out to route nine. It was nearing the end of summer, and some days there was a lot of traffic along that road; cars overheating and arguments between men in shirts they had sweated through, flower patterns darker from the moisture, sticking to their backs and their bellies. There was thievery and fighting, teenagers delegated by their parents to find anything useful roved from empty beach cottage to empty mc-mansion trashing what they didn’t take and being praised for the retrieval of a can of beans or a battery powered radio. Nonetheless, when they walked by my place, knowing I was in there, it was as if they reverted back to early summer, before the panic and chaos. They never even knocked.

I heard them talk about Montreal, or Boston, or places I’d never heard of. They talked with that bright sheen in their eyes, eyebrows raised, gesticulating towards the road, sweating, normally calm hair a wild, spiky mess; they looked insane, sounded lost and, in my opinion, all acted suicidal.

Soon it was as if there had never been a happy little beach community here at all. After a few days my food started to run low and I knew this place had been too populous to be a place to stay. I knew I had to move, and I had only one idea of where I needed to go.

3.

You're out there. I knew someone would find me here. Please keep posting. I need to know what is going on. I need help. I've barricaded myself in my bathroom and my roommate is still trying to get in.


I'm posting on the blog from my phone. It's been 8 hours and help still isn't here. Trevor hasn't stopped pounding on the door. I get the feeling his arms are starting bruise, or chafe, or ware down. Every time his arm hits the door there is a squishy sound like the open flesh of a wound being fingered around. It is slow and methodic. Maddening. Not enough force to knock it through. He throws up every few hours. How much of him is in there to throw up? Either way, their can't be much left of Trevor inside there.


The black liquid crawled under the door so I jammed a towel into the crevice at the bottom of the door. The towel is getting soaked through. My God, it smells awful.


Is this happening anywhere else? Do you have any information? I don't see anything on the news or online other than here.


Oh my God. OH MY GOD. I just got a text from my girlfriend's mom. It reads "Get here fast Dee is sick bitten hurt bad going to Metro hsptl"

2

There’s a dead woman in my basement. I can hear her down there when I stop working, scratching with her arm or her leg in the dirt of the dirt floor. Sometimes I have to stop working and walk over to the nailed shut door and press my ear against it and listen, and listen, until the soft sound gets louder. I press my ear harder against the door, or switch ears, or sometimes I get down on my hands and knees and listen at the crack at the bottom.

Listening makes my hands shake and my eyes tear, but I have to listen because I think the sound is getting closer. I hear it now in the dining room, where I never heard it before.

When the sun comes up in the morning I rip the board I nail across my door every night off with my hammer, then I go downstairs and listen and count the scratches, or try to hum at the same pitch as yesterday to see if I can hear them when yesterday I couldn’t. I think about ripping the board off the basement door too, and I scheme ways to get it bright down there so I can see her. But then I picture her gaunt face, lipless, grinning up and still moving and scraping, as I know she is down there. I never rip the board off, in fact I’ve nailed up three more.

Sometimes I think about packing my things and setting the place on fire, and walking out the front door onto the porch and never hearing the sound again. I’d be dead in days if I did that, I think, so I’m staying here and dealing.

1.

I'm alone. 


I'm alive, I'm alone, and my friend who is banging at the door died 20 minutes ago.


I have no idea what to do. I'm scared. All that blood. Black blood crawling under his skin and then purging out. It looked like a road map of veins inking its way up to his head before he threw up blood all over our apartment. It seemed like gallons of it swimming out of him. Black blood and guts. His black bile insides. It smelled putrid, instantly. 


This all happened after he had walked through our door desperately palming a neck wound. He said he was bitten. Then he died. I'm sure that he was dead. His heart stopped. That's when his veins turned black from the inside out. 


At least I'm sure that I thought he was dead. I'm sure I did not feel a pulse. Whether he died or no, I suppose I'm unsure. Seeing as he is outside our bathroom door right now and I'm stuck inside. Right before he went or changed I heard him say,


They're coming. 


I'd only seen one dead body before today. Some homeless guy early one morning didn't make it through the night. I only remember one thing about how he looked. His eyes were open and there was nothing to them. Nothing behind them and certainly they were not recognizing anything in front of them. They weren't recording anything. Just reels that once witnessed and now spin and spin and spin. 


When Trevor, my roommate woke up, he had black eyes. That black blood found its way. Those eyes had no more life than the those of that homeless dead man I saw. But he was awake. Awakened and seemed to be drawn to me, though you wouldn't know by his eyes. The empty reels were spinning behind them. But slowly he drew towards me. Clamping those teeth at me. He walked slow and I couldn't stop him from coming after me. 


He repelled me. I retreated. Then he threw up so more. Black insides liquefied and dying to get out of him. My eyes watered from the smell. He paced reaching out and I fell into the bathroom. Laying on my back, it was all I could do to kick the door shut and cry while I held off his attempts to get in with my outstretched legs. 


I called the cops. Busy. Busy? Parents aren't answering and neither is my girlfriend. The lines seem to be all tied up. I just get an unholy automated woman saying sorry she can't put my call through. But what she is really saying is "you're alone and there is no one coming to help you."


I tried sending some texts and they went through, but I thought the best thing I could do was post on my blog. Someone will see it and they will send help. I'm warding off Trevor's relentless attempts to get through the door with my legs. I'm scared to death and I'm writing for help. I'm too scared to move. Please come.


Are you out there?


Jack